[Peace-discuss] RE: Population control

[Phil Stinard]

Thanks, Tom, for writing a thoughtful reply to Ricky's defense of 
tree-spiking.  When I read Ricky's post, I was too shocked and upset to 
write anything constructive, so I set it aside for the night, and woke up to 
find your well-written reply.  Acts leading to the death or injury of others 
are NOT actions that should be lauded by people of peace.  Thanks for making 
this clear.

--Phil


>Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:00:16 -0800 (PST)
>From: Tom Mackaman <tmackaman at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Re: Population control
>To: Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>,
>	peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>Message-ID: <20060124060016.49429.qmail at web81411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Ricky,
>
>   In your postscript, you write that "the practice of tree-spiking gets a 
>bad rap."  Deservedly so!
>
>   In its defense, you claim that  "in fact spiked tree areas were 
>generally posted with warnings --- the purpose being to protect the trees 
>not to injure the workers."  Even if there were "generally"[!] warnings, 
>your justification posits a false dichotomy.  Of course, the purpose of the 
>spiking was to save trees, but how would it do so?  By the credible 
>physical threat to the bodies of those who would harvest and process the 
>tree.
>
>   Your next line implicitly places the responsibility for injury or death 
>on lumberworkers:  "Unfortunately a very few workers either chose to ignore 
>these warnings or were coerced into doing so by the boss, and injuries 
>resulted."  Unfortunate indeed!
>
>   And attempting to invoke the memory of Bari as a means to show why 
>tree-spiking "gets a bad rap" doesn't work, in since Bari was part of a 
>section of Earth First! who sought to distance the movement from direct 
>action methods that could potentially hurt people, and in particular 
>tree-spiking.  She correctly understood that the backlash against the 
>environmental movement caused by such tactics far outweighed any potential 
>good it might do.
>
>   Finally, whether or not you have no moral qualms with tree-spiking, I 
>think that in the end it's best to judge based on resutls.  What would a 
>historical balance sheet on tree-spiking tell us?  (1) Whatever short-term 
>victories might be attributed to the practice, if any, the destruction of 
>old growth timber and the deforestation of the world continue, no doubt 
>more rapidly than before; (2) The practice has discredited the entire 
>environmentalist movement in the eyes of working people in lumber producing 
>states.  Coming from Northern Minnesota, I can attest to that myself.  
>There were few instances of tree-spiking, but at least there the anger that 
>those "militants" created have damaged their cause beyond repair.  And in 
>states like MN, Oregon, Washington and elsewhere, the far right has used 
>such tactics as "wedge issues" to break apart the old labor-liberal 
>alliance.  That was no doubt inevitable for a number of reasons, but I'm 
>sure that Earth First! had not planned on
>  accelerating the process.
>
>
>   Tom
>
>
>
>Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   Looks like I missed another doozy.
>
>But before I launch into how the problem with
>population control is in who's doing the controlling,
>etc., etc., (I agree with most of what I've been
>reading anyway) is it possible to find out what
>exactly the proposal was and what the thinking was
>behind it?
>
>Ricky
>
>P.S. The practice of tree-spiking gets a bad rap, but
>in fact spiked tree areas were generally posted with
>warnings --- the purpose being to protect the trees
>not to injure the workers. Unfortunately a very few
>workers either chose to ignore these warnings or were
>coerced into doing so by the boss, and injuries
>resulted. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
>worked with both loggers and environmentalists in the
>Pacific NW during the 1980s and 90s, since they both
>had the same enemy: big capitalist logging companies,
>which were the ones eliminating both logging jobs
>(thru mechanization) and forest (sometimes old growth
>and sometimes clearcut). Judi Bari gave her life for
>making the connection.
>